League of Legends Team Liquid shows promise as NA front runners

The League of Legends Championship Series Finals took place
on Apr. 13 between Team SoloMid and Team Liquid to determine who would go to
the Mid-Season Invitational Tournament coming up in the coming weeks. The two
teams battled it out in a full five-game series in St. Louis to decide who would
ultimately be the best representative of North America.

Team SoloMid (TSM) came into this series with a chip on their
shoulder. After a rough start to the season, they were still the only team who
held a winning record against Liquid over the regular season. They brought in
Sergen “Broken Blade” Celik, a player from the Turkish League, and, combined
with their new replacement jungler of Matthew “Akaadian” Higginbotham, their expectations
were scattered. Still, they were able to prove they could run with the best.
Largely off of Broken Blade’s Vladimir pick, TSM was able to bring a 3.1
thousand gold deficit to win in 40 minutes. Game two was another victory by
TSM, this time in 35 minutes.

Liquid bit back in game three, with a 40 minute victory.
Yongin “CoreJJ” Jo was put on Tahm Kench this game, where he really shined. His
title of world champion did not go to waste, as he was able to protect and
enable his lane partner in Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng to carry the game. Jake
“Xmithie” Puchero also showed great proficiency on another niche pick in
Skarner, which helped further allow Doublelift to safely deal damage from the
back line.

It felt like Liquid finally looked comfortable as they went
into game four. CoreJJ, Doublelift and Xmithie both stuck with their champions,
and they took a dominant 25 minute win. They even outkilled TSM 15-3, with three
members of Liquid never dying. Going into game five, things were going to be
intense.

Intense they were, this game lasted the longest out of the
entire series. TSM banned Tahm Kench this time around, forcing CoreJJ onto
Braum instead. Xmithie still got Skarner and Liquid heavily invested in
late-game champions with Kai’Sa and Vladimir. On the other side, Akaadian got
Rek’Sai for the fourth time this series, with Andy “Smoothie” Ta’s Galio
support.

For the first 40 minutes, TSM held a solid lead. Akaadian
secured several neutral objectives early on. However, the tides changed quickly
around the 40-minute mark. CoreJJ succeeded as Braum in neutralizing Jesper
“Zven” Svenningsen’s Ezreal and Jensen was able to play the assassin in LeBlanc
expertly. His key picks on every member of TSM prevented them from ever
securing a big objective and allowed Liquid to stall for time. In the end, the
scaling nature of Kai’Sa and Vladimir was too much to overcome, and Liquid
managed to complete the reverse sweep and take the series over TSM. Liquid is
looking like the easy candidate for the strongest team North America has had to
offer in a long time, and they will have to prove it against some of the best
teams in the world starting May 1 in Ho Chi Minh City.